


Not the Path Imagined

by mgsmurf



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Dystopia, F/M, Modern AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:00:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25901722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mgsmurf/pseuds/mgsmurf
Summary: Jaime hated the Riverlands, he thought, as the sun rose blood orange over the blue shaded mountains. Yet, he finds himself exactly there, being escorted by the plain looking and remarkable acting Brienne of Tarth, through the worse of the chaos left in a broken and divided world. The end result is not at all as either of them would have imagined.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 27
Kudos: 79
Collections: Jaime x Brienne Fic Exchange 2020





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ro_Nordmann](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ro_Nordmann/gifts).



> The prompt I used from those given was: soulmate mark AU - dystopian society.
> 
> I hope that this dystopian retelling of the start of the JB story works. It's supposed to be a bit of an extrapolation of where our own could led put into a modern Westeros. Also, my first try at using soulmate mark, so I hope that I get it to feel right.

Jaime hated the Riverlands, he thought, as the sun rose blood orange over the blue shaded mountains in a haze of lifting fog. At least the morning light allowed him his first good look at his new captor. 

“You looked better in the dark,” he said. 

It caused Brienne of Tarth to tighten her large lips. Her face was plain, pale, freckled, her nose crocked from being broken a few times. Her short trimmed hair was a dull straw blonde and stuck out from her head at odd angles from the sweat already dripped down in the growing heat. Curse this humidity. 

If the Maid of Tarth’s face was plain, the rest of her was surprising. She stood a bit taller than himself, almost as broad, muscles evident under the stretched fabric of her light gray uniform shirt. Hands down she was the largest woman Jaime had ever seen. Was she as strong as himself? A good year wasting away in a cell in Stark hands, and she likely was. 

The old jeep they traveled in chugged up the mountain before then, turned the bend and ambled back down into the shade of another valley. Wind whipped through Jaime’s long golden hair and thick beard. He sniffed the open, fresh air, freedom he thought. 

Brienne, certainly not sensing his inner thoughts, took her eyes from the road to glance at him. Her eyes were a stunning blue, that made the beauty of the sunrise momentarily pale. Her best feature Jaime silently agreed. 

The virus that’s when it had all started to unravel, or the already present fractures were uncovered. Each state for themselves, the divisions that had festered for decades laid bare and widened. Truth had been a fluid thing, no one to believe or to led, no one to trust but yourself and your own experiences. Jaime had been just a teen then, that world before of his childhood wrapped in nostalgia, a dream he could never grasp, reality the nightmare they had all embraced. 

And in the chaos, his father, an oil man by trade in a long line of such, had done well. A hard man who cared about nothing but his legacy and power, Tywin Lannister had build himself an empire among the ruins of the Westerlands, given out just enough charity with his wise words and firm actions. 

The jeep took another bend in the road, climbed and descended another hill. “Not much of a talker,” Jaime commented. 

Brienne of Tarth tensed again. “There’s no reason for small talk.”

“Gonna be a long ride otherwise,” he gave his sweetest drawl that usually worked wonders on women. Brienne only frowned. Since she seemed unwilling to speak, Jaime did so. He inquired about where Tarth was, although he already knew, in the Stormlands, an isle off the coast, full of proud and seemingly stubborn people. He wondered aloud why she was serving as Catelyn Stark’s bodyguard. Odd that, as Tarth was nowhere near the northern rustbelt the Starks reined from. He spoke about the weather, asked how hot it might get, when they might stop, just hard far she thought they would get in a day’s drive on these backroads. 

Brienne of Tarth huffed and sighed and frowned, but replied to nothing. He was about to wonder how long it would take for her to break, when she spoke, with her crisp rather feminine voice, “My task Major Lannister is to bring you to King’s Landing to broker an exchange of Mrs. Stark’s daughters, nothing more.” Not that the realm had had a proper king for a good century, but the name remained, and there ruled the Great Council, currently headed by his father General Tywin, and whatever dolt had been named as the new president in light of poor President Robert Baratheon’s demise in a hunting accident. 

“That’s a poor trade,” Jaime stated. He was a trained and experienced soldier, an important asset to return to General Tywin. The Stark girls were teens, novices with no seeming abilities to aid their brother in his rebellious fight for further independence. Which was why the Young Wolf himself had not traded Jaime months ago. 

“It’s not mine to decide,” Brienne answered, although her terse words knew he spoke the truth. 

They fell into silence. Jaime absently traced the pink line on his inner forearm, a habit. Noteveryone had soulmarks and soulmates. It would seem some just fell in love with one another, and certainly some marriages were arranged, such as his step sister Cersei and her drunk brute of a husband the newly deceased President Robert. Sometimes soulmarks were birthmarks, or simply appeared, more often they resulted from a scar. 

The story went that his own parents, second cousins, had been matched by soulmarks. Tywin’s had resulted from a battle wound, back when the realm was whole and fought wars as one. It crossed his chest in a rough x and oddly it matched his mother, Joanna’s, own birthmark, a much more beautiful thing upon her outer thigh. Cousins marrying was not something people did anymore, but Tywin had used the soulmarks as evidence that the gods had ordained they should be together, and within half a year they were wed and within two years Jaime had been born. He remembered as a child tracing his mother’s soulmark, asking to hear the tale again, before his mother had died, before his father had remarried, a scandalous act after his soulmate had passed. 

Jaime’s own thin line was a birthmark and had darkened as his skin had goldened in the summer sun as a teen. Tywin, wanting him married with kids to inherit the family fortune, had posted it online to all the soulmark connection sites, back before society had broken itself apart. But, none had come forward with a match. 

Cersei, his beautiful step sister, golden haired and pale skinned with the perfect oval face and always wearing the highest of fashion, had a similar line upon her upper thigh, a scar from the accident that had taken her father from her and her mother. It traced a different path than his own, but Cersei said such did not matter. As their interest in each other grew with their increase in hormones as teens, she had declared the marks as soulmarks and then as soulmates. Jaime had, still did, believe such, having devoted his affections to Cersei alone, even after she had married Robert, even when he had heard of other affairs she had, they were soulmates and none of that really mattered, did it?

Brienne of Tarth skillfully took off her button up shirt to reveal a blue tank undershirt. Her arms were as muscular as the rest of her, but her neck was long and pale. The pink line of a mark snaked up her neck. Soulmark or not, it clearly did not have a match or Brienne of Tarth would be married and not playing at being a solider while escorting him through the Riverlands. 

#

She might not have been talkative, but Brienne of Tarth did seem capable. Without enabling GPS, which might allow for them being tracked, she took them on a collection of small highways, old forestry department roads and just plain back roads, always tracking south and east. 

He had watched her last night, in a run down mom and pop motel, as she precisely took apart, cleaned and reassembled each of her two handguns. She had also made no fight when Jaime had asked her to help cut his hair, and simply watched as he shoved his head bare. Cersei would have lamented the loss of his beautiful golden tresses, but if it got him back to her what did she have to complain about. 

Jaime hated these back hills, he thought, for about the hundredth time. One never knew what or who was around the next bend, up the next hill. He felt boxed in by the trees, towering pines, oaks and hickory. 

So, it should not have surprised him when their old jeep turned a corner to find themselves before a barn. Wood weathered to a light gray had been painted in bright blue, ‘Death to All the FUCKING Lions.’ Jaime did not keep the sneer from his face. Those soldiers and supporters of the Lannisters and his father were just people, doing their best in this mess that the world had become, no different than any Stark supporters. How dare they judge? 

The graffiti was just the start, rounding the corner of the barn they smelled the corpses before they actually saw them. Three women, young by the looks of what remained, dangling on nooses from the low spreading branches of a thick, old live oak. They wore mini skirts and tanks, a bit out of fashion, and pinned to each was a note in black sharpie claiming, “They lay with lions.” 

Jaime frowned as Brienne pulled the jeep beside the barn and unfolded herself from the vehicle. 

“What are you doing?” Jaime swiveled to give the openness of the old farm a once over. Who knew who might be in the bushes and overgrown tangles, or just how abandoned the farm truly was. 

“Come help me cut them down,” Brienne replied. She had already crossed the overgrown weeds and had drawn a knife to cut the first of the ropes. 

Jaime frowned deeper. “Leave them be. We’re going to be spotted.” He reluctantly exited the still running jeep, peered up at the bodies, pale bloated skin, the flesh torn where crows and other beasts had been at them. 

“They did not deserve this fate,” Brienne stately flatly as she hacked away at the first rope. The body plopped to the ground with a bit of a squelching sound. 

“No.” Jaime shook his head in agreement. What had these girls done, winked at a few of the Lannister troops, smiled too widely? “But they aren’t ours to care for.” 

“Better the crows get them?” Brienne’s voice rose in anger as she hacked away at the second rope. “They deserve a proper burial, and that is exactly what we’ll be giving them.”

“An’ just what do we have here,” drawled a deep voice behind them. 

Jaime turned, putting himself between the voice and the advancing Brienne. Curses, he should have been checking their backs, not gabbing. 

“I’m transporting a prisoner,” Brienne said, her voice steady and sure. 

The man cocked an eyebrow. He wore a Stark gray button up shirt, greasy jeans, muddy boots and a sweat stained ballcap. A shotgun rested in the crook of his arm. “Prisoner?” He gave Jaime a good look over. To make Jaime’s stasis less obvious they had traded his prisoner gray shirt marked with a number on the back, with a plain white undershirt, yet he still wore prisoner sweat pants, gray as well, with one patched knee and the other wore almost through. 

Two other men appeared behind him, one armed with another shotgun, one with a semi-automatic rifle strapped to his chest. Their clothing was similar, similar course cut hair and ill tended whiskers. 

“Where too?” The first man asked, his steel eyes stayed on Jaime as he asked Brienne. 

“South,” Brienne kept her voice steady, surprisingly so, her chin titled up, hand on the gun on her right hip. “Not that is is any concern of yours.”

“What were you doing with the whores there?” asked the man on the right. He gestured with his shotgun to the two bodies still hanging, the last on the ground in a heap. 

Brienne stiffened. Damn it, the silly woman was going to say what she shouldn’t. “We’ll just be on our way,” Jaime spoke, trying to plead with Brienne silently with his eyes. The fight would be one to three without himself armed, and Brienne only had her two handguns near. 

“Do I know you?” The seeming lead of the strangers stepped forward another step, still a good distance away. He cocked his head. 

Jaime dipped his head. “Don’t see why you would.” Not that his face wasn’t everywhere over the internet that reached even into this wilderness. Who knew how far unrecognizable his bald head and thick beard made him. 

“No, I do know you.” Another step closer, a dip of his own head to get a better look at Jaime’s. 

“I very much doubt it.” Brienne placed a claiming hand on Jaime’s shoulder. “He’s just a ruffian. Stole from Mrs. Catelyn, and she wants him taken to the proper authorities.”

“The beard gets you, but…” The stranger continued, raising his shotgun. “Looks like Jaime Lannister, fucking Lion of General Tywin, don’t he?” he called over his shoulder to his companions. They nodded in kind. 

“This is surely not Jaime Lannister,” Brienne’s voice was as hard and sure as her hand on his shoulder. Her other hand gripped her gun, had fingered the safety off. Jaime kept his eyes forward. 

“Yeah, yeah, I weren’t born yesterday.” The stranger sneered and his eyes twinkled. “So what is his name, both of yous at once now.”

Jaime looked at Brienne, who was looking at him as well. They had not previously discussed that part of disguise, making it impossible for them to comply. Damn, Jaime thought they would have gotten farther than this. Brienne lowered her hand from his shoulder. Jaime watched from the corner of his eyes as she reached for her other gun. Surely, she wasn’t able to take all three of them? Yet, he still stepped back, out of her way. 

The three strangers already had their guns raised and aimed at Brienne, but she beat them to firing. A clear shot rang out and hit the man with the automatic rifle in the center of his chest. He fell backwards before firing a shot himself. Her other gun fired on the man to the left as he cocked back his shotgun. He yelped in pain as Brienne’s shot hit his lower arm and forced him to drop his gun. Brienne strolled forward while her third shot hit the second man in the chest. She paused before the leader, her right arm extended and her gun inches from his face. He aimed his shotgun at her, sparing both his companions a quick glance. If they weren’t dead yet, they likely weren’t making it to help in time. 

“How ‘bout we call a truce?” the stranger asked. 

“Like you did for these young women you executed?” Brienne shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

The stranger sighed, finger on the trigger, but Brienne beat him to it. The last shot echoed over the empty hills as the last man fell backwards a shot through his forehead. 

Jaime blinked. She was better than he had taken her for, quicker, steadier, less green. He tried not to show his shock when she turned back to him. 

“Help me give these women a proper burial,” she asked. Stubborn too, he thought, as he sighed and helped her cut down the last of the women. 

“We need to do something with their bodies too.” Jaime waved a hand at the three men, all now dead. 

Brienne tightened her lips, paused from retrieving a folding shovel from the jeep. “There was a dumpster on the other side of the barn.” She nodded her head in the direction they had already traveled. “Burn them.”

Jaime gave a half frown. He wasn’t a fan of fire, not since he guarded the man President Aerys as a teen as the world collapsed around them in the Red Keep, yet her tone did not indicate any disagreement, and she had just shown how deadly she could be. 

A half hour later they were on their way again. Dirt covered three fresh graves and the fire still burned black in the dumpster. Jaime couldn’t help but glance at Brienne of Tarth, more an adversary than he had previously thought.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These men were the kind who took delight in having found a forgotten place to wreck their own madness and terror upon. It did not bode well. But through that pain Jaime and Brienne forge a connection and more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not exactly the end I had in mind, but the one that I could finally cobble together. Hopefully it doesn't all move too fast. Also, a big thank you to the moderators for putting this together and making sure that everything was completed for it. Despite me being one of the slower writers, this has been one of the better fic exchanges I have been part of.

“He recognizes me,” Jaime leaned over to whisper into Brienne’s ear. 

Brienne side-eyed him and he could see the doubt in the slight tightening of her lips. “Thank you, sir, for the directions,” she spoke clear and crisp out the jeep’s open window. 

The older man, a good ways off, always a good ways off now, with wisps of uncut gray hair and a thick beard nodded, frowned. They had stopped for needed gas and the elderly stranger had given them directions back to the highway, for why else would two civilized and foreign people be out in this wooden in-between in the Riverlands. The old man expected them to head that way, off of his lands, back on their way to somewhere with more people and more troubles. 

“He’ll tell someone,” Jaime said again in Brienne’s ear. They had already proven he could be recognized, and took care of it once. ‘Kill him,’ Jaime left silent. Brienne’s lips tugged tighter. She knew what he did not say. 

“Take care.” The old man waved. 

Brienne waved back, smiled. Jaime ducked his head and turned his face away from the man, as he sat back in the passenger seat of the beat up jeep. He gave Brienne a harsh look, wondered if she could really do what was needed. She shook her head, frowned, eyes on the old man. 

“Thank you. Have a nice day,” she spoke aloud as she shifted the jeep into drive. 

“You too,” the old man replied. He gave a final wave as the jeep pulled away. 

“I will not kill an innocent man because you think he may be a risk,” Brienne huffed under her breath at Jaime. 

She had morals, and while part of Jaime applauded her for such, another part saw her as naive for them, wondered when exactly she would finally have to compromise those high morals for the grim reality of the new turned upside down world. 

In reply, Jaime only shrugged. It wasn’t his mission to get him back to King’s Landing, although given these hills who knew who he’d end up under if they were found out. 

#

“Just what have we found ourselves here?” a voice with a heavy foreign accent spoke. 

Jaime’s fist paused mid-air as he straddled Brienne in the thick mud of the riverbed. He’d seen his chance for escape and seized it, trying to get one of Brienne’s guns away from her. In the process both her guns had been flung away, likely lost now in the muck. 

He had taken to using his fists, but Brienne was a goof fighter. She had a slow, guarded style with an impressive reach and was quicker than she looked for her size. A year of being captive and wasting had had Jaime huffing, tiring. 

Jaime rose off of Brienne, reached down to give her a hand back to her feet. 

The foreigner laughed, an oddly high pitched sound. He had been joined by others, at least four from what Jaime could count as the men gazed down from higher ground. 

Jaime knew he and Brienne must look a sight, both half caked with mud, bloodied lips and noses. “Just me and the dear wifey, settling a score,” he said, and draped an arm around Brienne’s shoulder, tugging her closer. She gave a half smile despite her busted lip, already in sync with him. 

“Settling a score?” the foreigner’s accent was odd, a bit from the Free Cities, a bit possibly Bravosi. He himself did not appear armed. He wore a dark button up shirt and tan cargo pants bloused into shined combat boots. His dark hair was slicked back including a pointed goatee on his chin. “What score could take you to such blows… in such a… place?”

“He said the Crownland Knights had a better pass defense than the Towers,” Brienne stated clearly, and they certainly were in the part of the old realms where dukes would be raised over football. 

The foreigner arched an eyebrow, while the armed men around him laughed. “A house divided, it would seem,” he finally said. 

Jaime stepped closer to Brienne, such that they were shoulder to shoulder. Neither was armed and they would have no chance against at least a half dozen armed men. It left running as their only choice. How far would they get in this brush? Would it just increase their chances of getting shot in the back?

“Let us not play this rouse,” the foreigner said. “The great Jaime Lannister. Heard tell, as they say, you were about these parts.”

Footfall crashed through the bush behind them. Jaime glanced over his shoulder to see another half dozen men. They were trapped. 

Brienne raised her already bloodied fists. “He is to be brought to King’s Landing, by command of Mrs. Catelyn Stark.”

The foreigner cocked his head. “We don’t answer to any Catelyn Stark.”

“But you do answer to General Robb Stark.” Brienne lifted her chin, straightened her broad shoulders to bring herself fully up to height. 

The foreigner laughed along with his men. “The bliss of being in the middle of nowhere, ones does not have to really answer to anyone.” Jaime’s heart dropped into his stomach, because was that not the truth of this place and time and to the ruthless people that it bred. “But, General Bolton may very well be interested in Lannister, at the least. Take them,” he ordered. 

Brienne got a good jab into the first man that approached them, but the second and third quickly had her arms bound. She kicked the fourth man, bit out at the men beside her, but there were too many to fight them. The foreigner approached as Jaime’s arms were tightly bound and the men threw him to his knees in the muck. A sneer covered the foreigner’s face, one of Bolton’s men, and it would seem not a very well kept one. 

“You know my name,” Jaime said, “but I seem to be at a loss for yours.”

“Locke,” the man gave a wide smile. “Put them in the back of the truck,” he shouted over his shoulder to his men. 

#

They jostled shoulder to shoulder in the back of an ancient ford pick up truck which might have once been a red in color. With bound arms behind them and long legs out before them, neither had the ability to not shake together as the truck bumped along on old forest department roads, then gravel and then finally rutted dirt roads, deeper and deeper into the wilderness, farther from any escape or rescue. 

Ahead, in open jeeps and mud splattered SUVs Locke’s men, laughed and joked and cursed. Rough men, and from their accents many not actually local to these backhill, instead the kind of men who took delight in having found a forgotten place to wreck their own madness and terror upon. It did not bode well for either himself or Brienne. 

“They’ll rape you,” he said, “wherever we stop, before sunrise.”

Brienne hardened her expression, looked ahead at the dirt cloud behind them. 

“It’d be best if you don’t fight back,” Jaime continued to her stubborn silence, “it won’t end well.” Oh, she could fight one or two of them off, but not all of them. He couldn’t make himself say it aloud, death awaited her if she frustrated these men too far. 

Her face hardened further, a deep frown on her lips. “Just lay there and take it?” her voice calm and solid as a rock. “Is what you would do?” Her final words cracked with emotion. 

Whatever fate awaited him with these men, rape it would not be. He sneered. “No, so good thing I am not a woman.” 

She huffed, tightened her lips. Jaime thought, what a shame Brienne of Tarth was born a woman, for she was one of the best and most interesting adversaries he had meet in a long while. They would break her, but then again would not this brave new horrible world have always have broken her eventually?

#

Darkness fell and cicadas sounded on the outskirts of the rough camp Locke’s men had made. The loud sounds of drunk men, a few random gun shots, hoots and hollers and deep laughs filled the tense air. Brienne fought when they finally came to drag her off, kicked and struggled and bit. Off in bushes far enough into the dark Jaime could make out only shadows in the halo lights from the main camp, her screams came, shrill and high-pitched, surprisingly feminine. He shouldn’t have told the lie to Locke to save her. But, when was the last time he had shaken a hand much less given a hug? When was the last time he had not been worried over a virus or an uprising, revolt or war? When had this pit of anxiety that always hung within him became normal? In that moment, in the hidden darkness of wilderness and the terrors of the men who inhabited it, he couldn’t sit by while this world broke one more beautiful thing. 

They dumped her in a heap beside him, and Locke, draped in shadows, leered down at him. Jaime should have been scared then, but he was a Lannister officer, son of General Tywin, even this rough man would respect that, surely.

Then, the machete came down on his hand, and Jaime’s scream echoed the hills louder than Brienne’s. 

#

What followed after was a jumble of pain and fever, laughter at his expense, and the gentle hands of Brienne when she tended him as asked. There were more backroads, a few farms and eventually what remained of a drafty warehouse that smelled of chemicals and piss. 

Brienne was not spared their captors torture, kicks and punches and words. They even did a round of fight night, where every man who wanted took a turn at her in a pen, some even with weapons. It left her bruised and busted. 

‘What was a hand’, he could hear Tyrion saying, they’d make him a good as new prosthetic one. His father would find a way to get him a bionic one, capable of firing faster and crushing necks. And Cersei… his dear Cersei, would she still love him when he came back a cripple? 

For a time he wondered if they were really going to let infection kill him, death by neglect in the age of modern medicine. When they finally got to Harrenhal, General Bolton, not that pleased by Jaime’s treatment and had sent his own medic to look at him. Qyburn was a weaselly man with questionable practices and bad reputation, but he knew enough about real medicine to give the proper antibiotics and mend up Jaime’s festering wound. 

It wasn’t until Qyburn was dressing his wound Jaime realized that his birthmark now intersected with a red angry scar above his wrist. It make a new mark, the line of old blossoming into a jagged zigzag. He wouldn’t even be close to matching with Cersei now, his beautiful Cersei. If the loss of his hand would anger her, the fact that they neither now or had ever been soulmates would injury her further. 

They dumped him back in the containment cell with Brienne, worn thin but medicated. It was something, and perhaps enough, he thought as sleep overtook him. 

He awoke later, covered in a blanket he did not remember doing himself. 

“There’s food,” Brienne sat across the small space on the other thin cot. She gestured to two tin plates of food, one wiped clean the other, his, untouched. 

Her shirt, horribly soiled now, had been left behind and she wore only her blue tank. The bruises she’d gotten had blossomed purple and yellow on her pale skin. “Do you feel better?”

Jaime sat up, shrugged. “Maybe.” He watched as she removed the bandage on her shoulder. He remembered that, the blood soaking her shirt as she stood chin raised, tall and regal in that dreaded pen they had attacked her in. She winced now as she looked at the red inflamed skin. Seemed Qyburn had mended it too, well done stitches crossed the cut, it led up to the thin line of her birthmark on her long neck. 

Brienne sighed and began to apply ointment to the wound. Jaime cocked his head, blinked, leaned closer. He had seen that before, the line blossoming into a jagged zigzag. But, that? Jaime blinked again. Wasn’t possible? Cersei, matching soulmarks or not, was his soulmate, his life, his love, the woman he had given all of himself to. 

“Is something wrong?” Brienne’s hands paused, her brow furrowed. 

Jaime frowned, cocked his head, eyes on her new scar. “Do you believe in soulmarks?”

She huffed, her long fingers just glancing over the line on her neck. “I suppose. Not that it has done me any good.” For she had not found her match, had not found another to marry instead, was that because…? “Why?” She cocked her head. “You look…”

“I have, had, one too,” he fumbled for words, gestured at the bandage covering his new stump. He wasn’t sure if he should roar or laugh at the gods. Had the last year and the last weeks been all about bringing him, them, to this moment? Words having failed him, Jaime ripped instead at his bandages. 

For a moment, he worried Brienne might flinch in horror, yet she had seen his wound when it was just bone and flesh, pus and stench. Now the flesh had been pulled over, stitched up, leaving the skin a mix of inflamed red and pale white. He gestured with his left hand to his wrist, the jagged line that led to the thin line of his own birthmark. “They match,” he gestured between his wrist and her neck and shoulder. 

Brienne frowned, shook her head. Yet, she rose to look in the one cracked mirror above the sink in the cell. A long finger traced old and new combined, then she looked back over her shoulder at his own new soulmark. 

“It can’t be.” She shook her head again. 

Jaime shrugged, sure the gods were laughing. “Why not?”

“Because we are enemies.”

“Do the gods care,” Jaime replied. 

“Because… you drive me crazy, are likely half mad, because…” She plopped back onto the cot opposite him. 

“The gods have an evil sense of humor.” Jaime couldn’t contain his laughter any longer. 

Brienne frowned, huffed. “Must you take everything so lightly?”

“I take rather little lightly.” Not that outworldly he had honed his ability to look aloft. 

She blinked those gorgeous blue eyes, in the dim light, bruises and all, there was an odd and unique beauty to her, a fragility despite her size and abilities. Would it be so bad to spend the rest of his life protecting her? “Why did you save me?” she whispered. 

It took Jaime aback. He shook his head, frowned. He would do anything to save his brother, had done a great deal of harm to save Cersei and her deeds, had ruined his honor and gone against a lawful order to save his father from President Aerys, yet Brienne was not much more than a stranger to him. Still, he had no words for why, not exactly, besides that he needed her saved, still whole, that perhaps fate had turned his hand. Instead of answering, he asked, “Would it be such a horrible thing, a life with me?” Because the more he thought about it, the more he might enjoy a life exploring the depths behind Brienne’s stoic nature. 

She tightened her lips, blinked those blue eyes, finally shook her head. “No, all the rest aside… it might actually…” she let out a soft sigh, “well… if the gods have fated it.”

“You’ll suffer through.” He tightened his lips, because what was he but an arrogate son of a rich asshole. Or he had been at least, he glanced at his new stump and slumped back on the cot. 

“No, I didn’t mean….” She shook her head, furrowed her brow. “It’s just a hand.” Her eyes as well were on his new stump. She slid from her cot with a grace unbecoming of her size and knelt before him. Her large, yet always surprisingly gentle, hands rewrapped the bandages around his wound. 

“Just a hand?” he mumbled in reply. “You can’t be an arrogate bastard, if you might also be a cripple.”

“I could see you perfecting it though.” Her words were not harsh, or judgmental. “Welcome to what the rest of us have already spent our lives learning, that the world is never fair.”

Because still all she saw was a golden solider, shallow and without morals. Had it ever really been him? But whatever might have been once brewed beneath his aloft surface, his crippling and the mistreatment and torture from a year before would be something completely different to overcome. He gazed down at Brienne of Tarth. While she might be just who she wished to be, what harsh words and opinions had she faced to be so? How many had called her a bitch, ugly, too manly, a dyke, an abomination? 

He felt tired and worn thin, yet Brienne gazing up at him with such… he couldn’t quite describe what might be going on in her quiet head, but he knew it lit something within himself. They had forged a connection, true, yet it was more than that, and yes, she represented the best of what he had wanted to be as a solider all those years ago as he’d stepped into the job as barely a grown man. But the feelings rumbling up in his gut, and lower if he was truthful with himself, was beyond that. Was this what having a soulmate was like? 

Jaime found himself leaning forward, Brienne’s eyes shocked, brow furrowed, as their lips met. Her lips were as chapped, dry and bruised as his own. For a moment it was awkward, as if she had never done this before, and Jaime himself had never kissed a woman besides Cersei. Then, she let out a soft, feminine sigh and the kiss shifted, deepened. She leaned upward, a broad hand gripping his shoulder. His good hand ran through her short tresses. Jaime angled his head, opened his mouth, and he sunk into her arms and the kiss, and for a moment it was perfection.

They parted, breathe warm upon each others faces, arms still wrapped around each other. Jaime couldn’t keep the cocky grin off his face. Brienne actually hit his good shoulder. Although, through the bright pink blush covering her checks, she smiled shyly at him. Jaime smiled back. A soulmate? he thought. He could get used to that. 

Brienne scooted out of his arms. Jaime thought about protesting, but he would have the rest of his life for kissing her would he not? She retrieved the uneaten plate of food and sat it carefully upon Jaime’s knees. “Eat,” she said, “get some strength back.”

“Just what do I need my strength back for?” Jaime cocked an eyebrow. 

Brienne sighed. “Insufferable.” Although there may have been a bit of a twinkle in her eyes. 

He did as asked, all the while wondering what a new life with Brienne of Tarth, his soulmate, might be like.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kinda wanted to include Hoat instead of Locke, but this uses more of the TV show cannon so he ended up being a bit of a blending of the two.

**Author's Note:**

> I might have based this version of the Riverlands a bit on Appalachia, although I don't think the Riverlands has quite as much mountains in canon.


End file.
